High winds help disperse fumes after gas leak at IKEA in Stoughton

Thursday

Mar 27, 2014 at 6:00 AMApr 29, 2014 at 1:25 PM

Emergency crews evacuated 500 people at IKEA in Stoughton after a gas main was struck shortly after noon Wednesday

STOUGHTON – Wednesday’s extreme winds, which gusted up to 50 mph, helped Stoughton firefighters with a gas main break at IKEA. “We were very fortunate it was a high wind day,” said Stoughton Fire Chief Mark Dolloff. “It helped to move the fumes out, and the high winds dispersed the gas.”

No one was injured and 500 people were evacuated from the store just after noon.

The average winds during Wednesday’s storm were 15 to 20 mph, said Charlie Foley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Taunton. But the gusts were clocked as high as 50 mph, he said.

The problem came after someone struck a gas service line outside the store while working on the construction of the new parking garage, said Columbia Gas spokesman Don DiNunno. That accident left a crack in a 2-inch, high-pressure gas line outside the building.

The Fire Department shut down the gas main as soon as it arrived. Repairs were being made to the cracked pipe and were expected to be complete Wednesday afternoon.

Stoughton Fire Department and officials from Columbia Gas then used portable gas meters and combed the entire store to make sure there were no dangerous levels of gas, Dolloff said.

Columbia Gas was notified that there was a problem at 12:08 p.m. Wednesday and arrived at IKEA at 12:29 p.m.

The store reopened at 2:30 p.m., but the heat inside was not to be turned back on until the pipe was fixed, said DiNunno. Dozens of IKEA customers waited in the nearby Costco parking lot while the store was shut down.

Sue Riveria drove all the way from Providence, R.I., only to be turned away by a pair of police cruisers perched at the front entrance to IKEA.

“It’s about a 40-minute trip to get up here,” Riveria said. “I just wanted to do some shopping but I couldn’t even get in.”

Barbara Lucy has worked for IKEA for the past five years in the kitchen department. “I was on my way to work when I saw the road blocked off,” she said. Lucy then saw her manager near the store and learned of the gas main break. She was waiting in the Costco parking lot just after noon to see when the store would reopen.

Earlier this month in New York City, eight people were killed and dozens of others injured after a gas explosion leveled two buildings.

Jennifer Bray may be reached at jbray@enterprisenews.com or follow her on Twitter @JenniferB_ENT.